The Verge reports that top YouTuber Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg is rescinding a $50,000 pledge to the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group that opposes antisemitism and supports Israel. The donation, made in the wake of Kjellberg's giggling use of antisemitic imagery and racial slurs on his game streams, did not go down well with his followers.
I made the mistake of picking a charity that I was advised to instead of picking a charity that I'm personally passionate about," Kjellberg said in the video. "Which is 100 percent my fault."
Kjellberg previously addressed the criticism against his donation on Twitter, acknowledging that "making a donation to the ADL doesn't make sense to everyone, especially since they've outright spoken against me." A spokesperson for the ADL told The Verge at the time that they learned about the "potential donation when everyone else did: when he made the announcement on his channel yesterday."
Regarding people who say bigoted things as a "joke", Ken White invented the Rule of Goats: "even if you say you're only fucking goats ironically, you're still a goatfucker."
To which I now add a corollary: "And the goats are now your fans."
